ARRIVE, REACH

ARRIVE, REACH

You use both arrive and reach to talk about coming to a particular place, often during or at the end of a journey.

If you have already mentioned the place you are travelling to, you can simply say you arrive. If you want to mention the place, you use arrive, followed by ‘at’ or ‘in’ and the place name.

1. He was nearly the last to arrive.
2. They were due to arrive at London Airport at about one o’clock.
3. That was how I came to arrive in Lexington.

You can use arrive to emphasize being in a place rather than travelling to it.

4. When I arrived in England I thought I knew English.

Reach is always followed by a noun or a pronoun referring to a place.

5. The weather broke a few days after we reached Zermatt.
6. Guerrero knew that Flight Two would never reach its destination.

You can use reach to emphasize the effort or the long journey required to get somewhere.

7. To reach it in nine days might not be easy.

Arrive at and reach can also be used to say that someone eventually makes a decision or finds the answer to something.

8. It took us several hours to arrive at a decision.
9. They were unable to reach a decision.